Thought-Driven Computer Control by ALS Patient

BrainGate Neural Interface System, from Cyberkinetics Inc., has been tested in a first patient with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease), and the results are quite encouraging:

… Leigh R. Hochberg, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator in the pilot trial of the BrainGate Neural Interface System (BrainGate), presented preliminary findings from the trial’s first participant with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease) in his presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Atlanta, Georgia…
In his talk, “Voluntary modulation of motor cortical activity by a person with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: initial BrainGate experience,” Dr. Hochberg presented data that suggest it is possible, even for a person with ALS, to voluntarily excite cells in their motor cortex by simply imagining moving, or intending to move, a paralyzed limb. According to preliminary findings, the participant, a 37 year-old man who is unable to speak or move his arms or legs, demonstrated the ability to voluntarily modulate his cortical activity to control a computer cursor and communication software. Further, once the neural decoder was calibrated (then a 20-30 minute process–now a 5-10 minute process) no learning time was required for a person with ALS to demonstrate initial control of a computer cursor using the BrainGate System. Over the first three months of testing, the BrainGate System recorded an average of 109 neurons each day. On the first day of attempted cortical control, with no prior training, the participant demonstrated good control of the computer cursor – achieving almost 70% accuracy on a point-to-point cursor-movement task.

For those of you not familiar with the system, here’s a video from one of our earlier posts: